James Diaz
This Light Always Hurts A Little
Yes, I will stay nearby
I’m listening deep
I know
the breathing routine
I watch the shallows
the dip in the water
when it comes up
against the intangible
the broken stone
what it means to be tossed
to be caught
to be loved
I’ve seen what stitches
torn out become,
blood on the wall
real ones, tiny threads
pulled with one’s teeth
because you can only crane
your neck so far when you’re in the jacket
and I don’t think that boy survived
he never came back to the ward
and the nurses had a deep sadness
in their eyes the next day
and I knew
he was gone
though they didn’t say it
that was long ago
and I am ready to admit
that I still don’t know much about my own body
what light does to a room
drenched in darkness
I’ve done to others
but I’ve also
taken the sun
out of the sky
sometimes
I am dual
that way
good
and bad
depending on
where the wind
is coming from
and how fast
but from you I learn
how much our pain
is related
we are cousins
of our experience
and I trust, no, strike that word-
which is only a word
and not deep enough-
I feel that we are sometimes the same
different but not so different,
both struggling for air
and water and
when the sky goes dark
we do too
and yes,
these poems
are bigger than light
I’ve measured it
oh intangible thing that it is
I am not so far from you
I am listening
to every move the wind makes
I am counting the blessings
even the ones that are in disguise.
James Diaz is the author of This Someone I Call Stranger (Indolent Books, 2018) and editor of the forthcoming anthology What Keeps us Here: Songs from The Other Side of Trauma (Anti-Heroin Chic Press, 2018). In 2016 he founded the online literary arts and music journal Anti-Heroin Chic to provide a platform for often unheard voices, including those struggling with addiction, mental illness and Prison/confinement. He resides in upstate New York, in between balanced rocks and horse farms. He has never believed in anything as strongly as he does the power of poetry to help heal a shattered life.
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